Port Royal Speedway
Rumble opener bites Satterlee once again
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Gregg Satterlee checks out his car's damage. (DirtonDirt)
PORT ROYAL, Pa. (Aug. 28) — For yet another season, Gregg Satterlee couldn’t find any luck Friday in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series opener of the Rumble by the River weekend at Port Royal Speedway. | RaceWire
The 42-year-old walked away unscathed from a final-lap heat race crash while battling Chris Ferguson for the third and final transfer spot, another bout of misfortune at the half-mile where the Indiana, Pa., driver is otherwise routinely in the mix.
A Lucas Oil winner at Port Royal in April 2022 — when he capitalized on Earl Pearson Jr. and Kyle Larson wrecking while battling for the lead — and a third-place finisher in that year’s event finale, Satterlee has encountered little but trouble on the late August weekend since.
He failed to qualify for 2024’s Friday opener after hauler trouble forced crew chief Robby Allen to borrow a rollback truck just to get Satterlee’s car to the track, then battery trouble prevented him from recording a qualifying lap.
Last year, a broken fan shroud created residual problems that caused him to miss time trials, and a leaky right-front tire later ended his attempt to transfer through the B-main. He sprung back in Saturday’s finale to charge from 17th to eighth, but even then lamented that “racing gremlins” seemingly find him every weekend at this event.
Friday’s crash added another layer of letdown when Satterlee ran door-to-door with Ferguson for the final transfer on the last lap before the two converged entering turn one, sending Satterlee hard into the outside wall and leaving the right-rear portion of his Rocket Chassis badly damaged.
“Yeah, or something happens every year. And every year on this night,” A dejected Satterlee said while observing his bruised-but-fixable race car. “Yeah, I don’t have a lot to say about it.”
Satterlee, a 10-time winner this year, described the hit as “pretty hard,” though he climbed from his battered No. 22 without injury after the contact sent him careening right-side first into the turn-one wall.
“We’re going around there pretty fast, you know?” Satterlee said. “Just kind of got — I don’t know. We just were both trying to get to the same place on the racetrack.”
Satterlee felt Ferguson could have given him more room entering the corner.
“I think when a guy says, ‘You’re outside,’ you’re going to the corner that fast and you know he’s there, you turn in and get out in front of him,” Satterlee said. “And you don’t just run up the middle of the racetrack and, you know, take the air off the car. But that’s … just s--- happens out there.”
Ferguson saw it differently, though the Mount Holly, N.C., driver wasn’t looking to assign blame after eventually climbing to second. He believed his car was quicker while charging from fifth and had already traded sliders with Satterlee before their last-lap encounter.
Ferguson crossed underneath Satterlee exiting turn four taking the white flag and pulled alongside down the frontstretch. He believed Satterlee was anticipating another slider and protecting against it as they entered turn one.
“At the flagstand, I was already in front of him,” Ferguson said. “I wasn’t running the bottom, I was running the middle. … I think he also was trying to protect the slider from happening. And we were just really close.”
The contact was slight compared to its consequences.
“I didn’t really slam him. He didn’t really turn hard into me. We hit just right,” Ferguson said. “And when we hit, it straightened us both out. When you hit, you can’t do nothing then. You’re just along for the ride. There for a second, I thought I was going to crash, too.”
Given the speed they carried into turn one, Ferguson was relieved Satterlee emerged OK.
“I hate it for him,” Ferguson said. “I’ve been in those situations where I’ve been on the wrong end of it. … This is a fast track to wreck at.
“I’d love to say it’s something I could’ve done a little different,” he added “It’s just, sometimes that happens in racing.”
Satterlee’s attention quickly turns toward salvaging the weekend Saturday. He believed Friday night that the damaged car is repairable for the $50,000-to-win finale.
“We’re gonna try to fix it,” Satterlee said. “It’s got a lot of stuff bent up. Change everything that’s bent, which is a whole bunch of stuff, and we’re coming back tomorrow. We’ll just get it fixed. It’s a new day tomorrow.”
.webp?v=2.0.6)
